


Nature's Cloying Embrace

by Calacious



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Groping Plants, Hurt Lance, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Inspired by Photography, Killing of Killer Plants, M/M, Potent Pollen, Sentient Plants, Shiro to the rescue, kind of cracky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 20:01:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11721525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Calacious
Summary: That Lance had a handsy, killer plant to thank for waking up in Shiro's arms is really not worth mentioning.





	Nature's Cloying Embrace

**Author's Note:**

> Silly. Self-indulgent. I was looking at the picture of a hibiscus flower that I use as my computer's screen saver and this story happened. 
> 
> I hope someone enjoys it. Let me know.

The colorful flowers on this planet were huge sentient beings that dined on the small rodent-like animal life and large insects that populated the flower filled forest. They communicated  to each other through the movement of their petals, leaves, and undulating stems, making sound and gestures that somehow stood for words.

Taller than the paladins, the flowers towered over them as they walked down a path made by the locals through the veritable jungle of plant life. Light from the two suns barely reached the paladins on the dirt path, but it was still hot and humid beneath petals and leaves that waved above them.

They were slowly, steadily making their way toward the center of the planet where a diplomatic meeting they'd been invited to would take place once they arrived. There were several different species of aliens meeting on the planet as well, and none of them were allowed to land directly in the center of the planet. Each visiting entity had been given a set of coordinates where they could 'park' their spaceships (underground) and then travel to the meeting place on foot.

Coran, Allura, and Hunk, were fascinated by the local animals and plant life alike. Lance found it all rather creepy, but he wisely kept his thoughts to himself. The ground was soft underfoot, and Lance kept sinking into the dirt. Looking behind him, he could see that Hunk and Pidge were struggling just as much as he was. Keith had gone ahead to scout out any dangers they might encounter, Allura and Coran looked like they were on a stroll through a lovely garden, and Shiro was a little further behind, making sure that no one could ambush them from behind.

Lance was a little bored, and it was much too hot, and he kept sinking into the dirt. If he had to walk much further, he didn’t think he was going to make it without taking some kind of break.

Each visiting group had a different landscape through which to traverse. Lance almost wished they'd been given coordinates for the desert-like landscape, or the icy landscape, or even the landscape riddled with crater-sized holes.

Sighing, Lance ran a hand through his sweat soaked hair and tried not to trip over the ginormous roots that crisscrossed the dirt path every few feet. He really did not want to face-plant in the middle of a forest-jungle comprised of humongous plants that could 'see' and think for themselves. He did  _ not  _ need to be laughed at by some overgrown geranium, or sunflower the size of a miniature skyscraper.

"How much further until we reach this place?" Lance asked, hoping that his voice did not come out as whiny as he feared it did.

"We will get there when we get there," Allura answered the same way she had the last three (or four, or dozen) times Lance had asked.

"That's what I thought," Lance muttered beneath his breath, but he gave Allura a winning smile, saucy wink, and aimed a flirty series of 'gunshots' at her with his fingers.

He was so focused on appeasing the anger he could see sparking in Allura's eyes that he barely missed tripping over a lumpy root that almost seemed to rise up out of the earth before him, but did not miss the pothole that followed it, and landed, sprawling face first in loamy dirt, getting a large amount of it in his mouth. Sputtering, Lance attempted to push himself up, off of the ground, but got entangled in the root that he'd managed to miss tripping over in the first place.

"Ugh," Lance said, face heating up in embarrassment as he swallowed a mouthful of dirt and continued to struggle, unsuccessfully, with getting himself off of the ground.

"Stop!" And that was Shiro's voice, which normally brought Lance all kinds of happy thoughts, but currently just added to his current sense of overall humiliation.

Calm,  _ cool as a cucumber under just about any circumstance _ , Shiro was there, witnessing one of Lance’s more embarrassing moments. _ The _ Shiro that Lance kind of sort of had a mini-crush on.  _ The  _ Shiro that kind of inspired the mostly one-sided 'rivalry' that Lance had going on with Keith.  _ The _ Shiro that was currently standing next to Lance's prone form, looking down at him with concern that pinched his handsome face.

Shiro knelt down beside Lance and placed a warm, broad hand on his back, and Lance wanted to sink into the dirt that, for some strange reason, tasted like a combination of blood, sweat and salty seawater.

"Stay still," Shiro said. His mouth was inches from Lance's ear, and the warm breath tickled Lance's neck. "I think this dirt is like quicksand. It seems to be pulling you down a little more each time you try to get up."

_ Revision of thought, I do not want to sink into the weird tasting dirt. I want to live, _ Lance thought.

Lance's heart hammered in his chest, and he could have sworn that he heard the enormous leaves of the flowers moving in a way that sounded an awful lot like laughter. There were a million things that Lance wanted to say just then. Maybe even a billion. And some of them were even witty and fun. Some were jokes that would have possibly made even Allura laugh.

What came out was a broken, whiny sounding, "Shiro, help me."

If embarrassment could kill, Lance would drop dead right now. Actually, he would have dropped dead a few seconds ago, back when he'd fallen in the first place.

"You're alright," Shiro said, his hand was a spot of warm comfort on Lance's back. "It's going to be okay, just stay still. I'll get you out of this. Don't worry."

Lance felt like swooning with giddiness, and immediately chastised himself. He was not some damsel in distress who needed rescuing, he was all guy. 

A guy...in distress... who needed rescuing.

"Kill me now," Lance muttered into the dirt, praying that Shiro hadn't heard him.

There was a fluttering within the petals above them, and the ground seemed to shake, and then something wrapped around Lance's legs and suddenly he was airborne, torn from Shiro's reaching grip and carried up, up, up toward a huge pink and yellow flower. The petals waved and the head of the flower bobbed, dusting Lance with some of its sticky yellow pollen.

Lance's lungs seized and he launched into a series of sneezes and coughs that made him fear he was going to lose a lung, or two. He was dangling, upside down, from the very root that he'd nearly tripped over, and one of the flower's large leaves was closing in on him.

Struggling to free himself, Lance's heart nearly fell out of his chest as he was dropped, only to be caught within the surprisingly cushy folds of a fuzzy leaf that had been reaching for him. Lance could hear his friends shouting below, but he couldn't make out their words through the ringing in his ears.

Dizzy, and disoriented, Lance's vision swam as the leaf furled around him and raised him up to the head of the still bobbing flower. Insects were buzzing, loudly, keeping just out of the reach of the flowers, and the other flowers were crowding around them, watching. One reached out and tried to 'touch' Lance with its leaf, but the offending leaf was slapped by the flower that held Lance and it quickly recoiled, making a hissing sound.

The flower seemed to be 'shouting', "Stay back. Mine," with the way that it was waving its fronds and petals, and holding Lance close to its stem. Lance felt like throwing up, and wondered just how hard Keith was laughing at him, how deeply the frown lines were creasing Shiro's forehead, how panicked Hunk was, how intrigued Coran and Allura were by the interesting turn of events, and just how far Pidge would go to get details from him about his experience later, once he was freed from the plant that was cradling him like a child.

Lance was raised higher, and the flower's 'face', there really was no other word for it, bowed down toward him and stroked Lance's trapped body with its silky, yet deceptively strong, petals.

"Ugh," Lance said, sputtering at the unwanted attention that the flower was lavishing on him.

He struggled against the leaf's strong hold on him, succeeding only in making it grip him tighter, squeezing him until it was hard for Lance to breathe. He felt lightheaded, and knew that he was close to passing out as the flower's long, bulky stamen drew nearer and nearer, shaking more of its dusty pollen in his face, forcing him to breathe the choking, cloying substance into his lungs. His thoughts grew disjointed. He had a bad, bad feeling about this.

"Hold on, Lance!" Shiro's strained voice reached him from far below, and Lance latched onto it as he tried to remain conscious while the flower's stamen started groping him.

"Stop," Lance pleaded. "Stop, stop, stop. Please stop."

"I'm coming to get you!" Shiro's voice sounded much too far away to be of any help for Lance.

Dark spots danced in front of Lance's eyes, and he tried in vain to blink them away. He could hear the others below. Could hear Shiro calling to him, telling him to hold on, but Lance couldn't do it. He couldn't hold on. He couldn't keep his eyes open. He couldn't get away from the groping stamen. He couldn't breathe without feeling like each breath that he took would be his last. He couldn’t even think clearly.

_ This is not how I want to die _ , Lance thought.

A single tear rolled down his cheek, and the flower's stamen wiped it away. Too tired, and dizzy and fuzzy minded to care about what happened to him, Lance gave into the darkness between one labored breath and the next, not even waking when the ground quaked and trembled as Shiro, Keith, Pidge and Hunk tore into the flower's root system, and felled the plant. 

The flower crashed to the ground with a mighty roar, upsetting the flowers around it, causing them to move their roots as far away as possible from the angry paladins. Some of them even uprooted themselves and moved further away from the path, far from the reach of the mad hacking of the paladins.

When Lance finally did regain consciousness a few days later, he found himself cradled, not in the green leaf of a handsy, larger than life pink and yellow flower, but in Shiro's arms. There was a soft smile on Shiro's face when Lance's eyes fluttered open, and the lips that found Lance's were warm, if a bit chapped.

"It's good to see you awake," Shiro said.

"It's good to be awake," Lance fairly croaked. "Uh..." he blushed when he realized that he was pretty much lying on top of Shiro and that they were both nested in the blankets of Lance's bed.

"Do you want me to leave?" Shiro asked, blushing.

Lance, for once at a loss for words, shook his head and relaxed into Shiro's hold.

"It's just, I didn't think you would mind," Shiro said after a pause. He cleared his throat and continued. "While you were under the, uh, influence of the pollen, you kind of, well, you kind of said some things. Some things about me, and..."

"Oh no," Lance said, heat traveling throughout his entire body. He probably looked like a lobster.

"Hey, it's okay," Shiro said, calming Lance with a kiss, and stroking the tense muscles of Lance's neck with his thumb. "I, kind of feel the same way about you."

"Really?" Lance asked, searching Shiro's eyes for the truth, and smiling when he realized that Shiro wasn't lying.

"Really," Shiro said, assuring Lance with a kiss that made Lance's toes curl.

"What happened?" Lance asked, not sure if he really wanted to know. "I kind of passed out," he said, looking away from Shiro in shame.

"Hey, none of that," Shiro said, cupping Lance's cheek, waiting until Lance looked at him before he continued. "The natives of that planet told us that the pollen you'd ingested was pretty potent and that, had we not chopped the flower down to get you back it would have, well, it would have had its way with you while you were still under the influence of the pollen, and then it would have implanted its seed within you. You would have been buried, alive, and then died giving 'birth' to the offspring of the flower. The soil of that part of the planet is comprised, in part, of the blood of those that the plants chooses to pollinate."

"Why did the people, or whatever, that invited us to their planet send us through that flower jungle then?" Lance asked, brows scrunching up in confusion. "Didn't they know it would be dangerous?"

Shiro's jaw clenched, and his eyes grew hard. His grip tightened on Lance. "They knew alright. They were attempting to appease the 'gods' of their planet by sacrificing four visitors to them; apparently there were dangerous plants and animals along all four routes to the center of the planet. The dignitary 'meeting' was a complete ruse. They’d lured us there to die."

Lance's heart skipped a beat, and his palms grew sweaty. "Did...was I the only one who survived the set up?"

Shiro closed his eyes, and nodded. "We were too late to save anyone else. By the time that we knew what was going on, the others were dead."

"I, I'm not sure how I should feel," Lance admitted. On the one hand he was happy that he'd survived what would no doubt have been a painful experience, and on the other, he was devastated that others had died, probably terrible, painful deaths.

"Lucky," Shiro said, rubbing Lance's back. "You should feel lucky, and relieved, and...happy to be alive."

"I am," Lance said, something hot coiling in his gut when Shiro smiled at him and traced his lips with an index finger. "I am grateful, and happy, and...” Shiro kissed him, making him lose his train of thought. 

“Your lips taste like warm beach sand on a sunny day," Lance murmured. 

Shiro blinked at him, and laughed, then kissed him, and Lance realized that he'd never been happier than he was at this very moment, lying ensconced within Shiro's protective embrace. That he had a would be killer flower’s potent pollen to thank for it was not worth thinking about. 


End file.
